The Disposables

by David Putnam

  He saw me and slammed the door. The line scattered. Some screamed when they recognized the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s green raid jackets. “Grab yo babies. Grab yo babies.”

  I threw the ram through the door just as it latched closed. It sprung open so hard the knob imbedded in the wall. Inside, Q-Ball ran up the stairs. I chased him, clubbing him over the head with my gun.

  The second time, out on bail, he was back at it in the same apartment. I wrote another warrant and we hit it again. This time he’d changed his MO and thought he was safe. With the front door locked and barred, the line of customers ran out from under the second-story window. Q-Ball hung precariously out his second-story window, his heels locked under his bed to keep from falling. He dropped a fistful of money when he saw the team deploy on his apartment. He yelped, struggled to pull back in as I rammed the door barricaded on the other side. It took ten or fifteen strikes, putting everything I had into it. The door came down. I ran up the same stairs and found him lying on his bed, feigning sleep, his head bandaged from our first encounter. What else could he do? On the floor, piled two feet high were the wadded-up greenbacks he’d been throwing back into the bedroom from his perch dangling precariously out the window. I said, “Peekaboo, asshole,” a saying that became immortalized in the BMFs, and fell on him with both knees, the barrel of my gun again educating his noggin in how it was not a good thing to sell dope to kids.

  Dora Bascombe didn’t venture in without permission. She’d been on the street long enough to know better. Q-Ball came to the open door, a big smile on his ferret face. He knew what stood before him. Bascombe didn’t have any money. There was only one thing he’d take in trade. I only hoped she wouldn’t do it in front of Tommy.

  Out front on the street, gunfire erupted, sounding like popcorn in a microwave, a common occurrence this side of Central Avenue.

  Q-Ball paid it no mind, put his arm around Dora’s shoulders, and with his other arm outstretched, ushered her in. He hesitated, looked over at me, trying to remember where he’d seen me before, the Band-Aids doing their job. I didn’t look away and held his glare for several long seconds before he took out a cell phone, dialed, and spoke. They went inside, all of them.

  Even Tommy.

  I knew I didn’t have much time to do what had to be done. He’d just called in his ghetto dogs.

  Chapter Twenty

  Q was bold and left the door wide open. He’d moved up in the world he’d chosen. He was now a VP, head of a district, probably five square blocks.

  Just before I got to the doorway, he reappeared, gun in hand, his eyes locked on mine. I continued to move toward him as he brought the gun up, pointed right at my belly, a pistol barrel, large and round, one I knew from experience could wink fire and pain. His smile dropped. His expression transformed to fear as recognition set in and stole his common sense and false bravado.

  Because he recognized me, the caper wasn’t going to be a clandestine snatch. The loss of the element of surprise turned into a real problem that in the end would jeopardize everything we’d worked for. Nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t leave Tommy to the life he’d been dealt. No way.

  Pale and quaking, with his free hand, Q reached over, took hold of the door, and slammed it shut. Before he had time to throw the deadbolt, I rose up on the ball of my left foot, at the same time bringing my knee up to my chest, and kicked as hard as I could. The door banged open a second after it closed. The edge caught Q in the face. It mashed his nose flat. His raggedy ass flew back against the wall where he slid down with a sappy expression on his blood-smeared face.

  Inside, Dora held Tommy up in front of her as she backed up. Using him as a shield.

  “Put the boy down.”

  “Get away from me.”

  Tommy caught his mother’s terror and began to cry, a long, slow wail.

  “Now you’ve gone and scared the kid. Just put him down and go in the other room.”

  “What? You going to take my boy? Is that it? You some kind of baby raper?”

  “Put him down, now,” I said through clenched teeth, the thought of her accusation, the nerve.

  She set him down on the floor, but held on to his shoulders. “Okay, okay, gimme five hundred dollars, and you can have him.”

  She read my mind, saw the sharp edge of hate in my eyes. “Okay, okay, three hundred.”

  I squatted. “Tommy, I’m your friend. You don’t have to worry about me. I won’t hurt you. I won’t ever hurt you.” I reached out a hand. “I promise. I only want to be your friend.”

  Unafraid, he stopped crying, toned it down to a whimper, and stared me right in the eye. He had a lot of grit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw mama back up, her hand going behind her, searching for a weapon. I couldn’t break the contact too soon, not and have him on my side. His small hand came out slowly reaching for my big mitt. “That’s a boy. You’re a brave little man.”

  Outside the apartment I heard footsteps. The ghetto dogs trailed in to protect their master.

  Tommy’s hand was ice cold. I noticed his lips were tinged blue. He shivered from fear and cold.

  Dora found her weapon. Her hand wrapped around a heavy, green glass ashtray. I stood in one long fluid motion so it wouldn’t spook Tommy and stepped around him as his mother pulled back with everything she had and swung. I ducked my head and took the blow on the shoulder. The frightful pain rippled up and down my spine. With my left hand, I tucked little Tommy inside my great coat, covered him up. At the same time, I swung a right fist backward at his mother’s face. My fist connected solid to her forehead. Her body let out an involuntary sigh as she wilted to the floor, unconscious. Tommy, on the other side of me, never saw it. His body an ice cube, burrowed into the heat of my body, his little arms going around my chest, as I squatted, the arm with the cast a little awkward.

  There wasn’t time. Q’s crew would be coming to back him up. I stepped over to the moaning Q, his eyes now wide with fright, leaned down, and took the Colt .45 from his limp hand. Too much gun for a punk like him to accurately control.

  The doorway shadowed with a throng of Blood gang members. In an after-action, beer drinking tailgate party, the BMFs would have called it a “blood clot.” I automatically turned my shoulder away from them, putting my body in between the threat and Tommy.

  “Step out of the way, boys. I got no beef with you.”

  Four of them, just outside the door, backed up almost to the chain-link fence that surrounded the defunct pool. Only one held a gun, a sawed-off double-barrel twelve-gauge. Enough fire power to cut me right in half. The largest by far of the thugs had on a red tank top. His thickly muscled right bicep wept blood from a fresh bullet wound, the result of the earlier gunshots, a drive-by. Fearless, loyal, and brave, he said, “Where’s Q-Ball?”

  I kept the gun down by my side, half looking at them over my shoulder. “You don’t want any part of this. Back on out and—”

  “I said, where’s Q?”

  Behind me on the floor, Q said, “Man, are you crazy? Doan you know who dat is? Dat’s Bruno Johnson, the poooleeese. Let him go ’fore he kills all’ve us.” Q’s voice rose as he spoke until it was almost a screech. He crab-crawled deeper into the apartment. On the top of his head, ropy strips of scalp laid bare where the hair never grew back from when I had tried to educate him in the ills of drug dealing. I guess I’d been a poor teacher.

  The four thugs looked at one another. The big, mean one with the fresh bullet hole in his arm remained undeterred. “Fuck this punk, man, dere are fo’ of us and only one a ‘m.”

  Q screeched from deep in the dim apartment. “Dint you hear what I said? Dat’s Bruno, The Bad Boy Johnson, and I swear to gawd, he’ll kill us all. Let him go, let him go, let him get his sorry ass outta here.”

  Maybe he had learned a little something from our prior lessons after all.

  Q’s hysteria turned contagious. The big thug broke eye contact, looked at his friends who continued to back up. They all shifted
and moved off around the dirt pool, slowly at first, then in a big hurry, cowardly curs with their tails between their legs.

  I put the Colt in the pocket of the army coat and picked Tommy up, his rib bones hard against my hands, he was so damn skinny. He wrapped his legs around my waist. I buttoned the coat around him. He’d stopped shivering.

  I went back into the foul-smelling apartment only dim enough to show the outline of furniture, found Q huddled in the kitchen, next to the wall and fridge, his arms over his head. “Whatta ya want? Whatever it is take it. Take it and go.”

  His plea stopped me short and gave me an idea. I nudged him with my foot. “You know damn well why I’m here, asshole.”

  “No, I don’t, swear to gawd I don’t.”

  “I want my money.”

  “What gawd damn money’s dat?” His head came up, indignant. Money was his life and easily superseded his fear.

  I kicked him, but not hard. “Don’t you play dumb with me, you candy-ass punk, I’ll shoot you right here. You know me. You know I’ll do it and not think twice about it.”

  “Aw’ite, aw’ite, doan shoot. All the green I gots is in a bag behind the vent, behind the vent under the water heater.”

  I kicked him again. “Get it and hurry up.”

  I followed as he crab-crawled quickly through the living room area, down a short hall to a closet. Tommy’s legs had relaxed, his whole body limp. The comfortable heat after the constant cold put him right to sleep.

  At the end of the hall, Q started to open the door. I kicked it closed. “You come out with a gun it’ll be your last conscious act. You understand me?”

  “I ain’t no fool.”

  “Get it then and make it snappy.”

  He opened the closet. Inside sat a fat water heater just like he said. He fumbled in his pocket and came out with a slot screwdriver, the key to his riches. His hands shook. Blood dripped from his broken nose onto his wrist as he fumbled with the four nearly stripped screws. When the vent came off, I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him away with my free hand. I reached inside and felt a Mac-10 submachine gun on top of a nylon gym bag. I pulled the bag out.

  “How much is in there?”

  “Dere’s forty-five.”

  “Forty-five, that means you can tell Jumbo he still owes me another—no, you tell Jumbo this is interest only. You tell him he still owes me the entire one-twenty-five. You got it?”

  “Jumbo? I doan know no—”

  I shoved him with my foot, then put it on his chest pinning him. “Don’t even try to tell me you don’t know Jumbo.”

  “Awite, awite, I knows him. But all dat money ain’t his. Some’ve it’s mine.”

  “You can work it out with him. This is your boy, isn’t it?” I said, indicating Tommy Bascombe under my jacket.

  “Hell, no, that ain’t my boy.”

  I put more weight on his chest.

  “Awite, awite, he’s my lil rugrat, whatever you say, awite.”

  “I’m taking him, holding him ransom until I get the rest of my money. You understand? You want your kid back, you better tell Jumbo to pay up. And I don’t have to tell you what will happen if you go to the cops. You or your woman out there.”

  The idea came to me all of a sudden, some smoke to cover for the taking of Tommy.

  “We won’t rat to no cops, dat’s for damn sure.”

  “Now get up. You’re going to walk me out of here just in case some of your homies think they can take me on.”

  “Aw, man.”

  Outside on the sidewalk, night had slammed down without fair warning. Tommy still slept against my chest and grew heavier with each step. I tried to hold him up with one arm the other in my pocket holding the Colt against Q’s spine. He carried the bag of money.

  “Where’s your hooptie?”

  “I ain’t got no ride.”

  “I’m not going to steal your car. You’re going to drive us out of here.”

  “Right dere.” He pointed to a Cadillac Escalade, Kelly green with twenties on the wheels. He’d moved up the food chain, an aberration for such a weak-kneed, pencil-neck geek.

  “Get in.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He drove us east on 124th Street with the heater on full, then over to Alameda northbound to Imperial Highway. I started to sweat. “Pull in right here.”

  I pointed to a no-name tire shop. Mexicans inside hard at work, long after dark, finishing up their twelve-hour day, with four cars up on lifts, a couple still in queue waiting. He didn’t question, but pulled right over, anxious to get rid of me. I opened the door and hesitated. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to your son?”

  “Ya, ya, bye, kid, doan you worry none. I’ll git yo sorry ass back.”

  I found it difficult to stifle a smile. “Don’t forget, tell Jumbo, no cops. And keep that woman in enough dope she doesn’t cause a problem. You hear?”

  I got out. He gunned it before the door closed, pulled right out in traffic without looking. A Bimbo bread truck slammed into the side of his perfectly kept Caddy with enough force to slew it sideways over the curb and into a power pole. The crash startled Tommy who jumped. He rose up like a prairie dog over the vee at the top of the jacket. “Wow.”

  I walked down along the side of the tire shop, Tommy in one arm, the bag slung over my shoulder.

  “You hungry?”

  He looked up at me his eyes large and wet. “Where’s my mama? I want my mama.” He put his head back against my chest. It never ceased to amaze me how a parent could abuse a child, starve him, torture him, and the child continued a rabid loyalty.

  “She’ll be along soon. She told me to get you something to eat, said that you haven’t eaten in a good long while. What do you like best to eat? Hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries, vanilla malts?”

  “I want my mama.”

  We continued through a field onto the next street. “Okay, how about an ice cream? My boy always likes ice cream after we have dinner.”

  “You gotta boy?”

  “Yep, just about your age. He loves ice cream.”

  He hesitated. “Chocolate ice cream with hot fudge?”

  I thought about it, not wanting to lie. Where would I get chocolate ice cream and hot fudge? “Yep, we could do that. First, your mama said to get some good food in your belly before the sweets. You know the rules. So what’ll it be?”

  He brought his head up, looked around. “Go left here over to Lucy’s, they have great taquitos with real guacamole. Whenever Mama gets a little extra money, she takes us out for a treat, Lucy’s for the real guacamole.”

  The word guacamole didn’t fit with someone so young, and it would’ve been cute the way he’d said it had he not been too anxious to defend the witch of a woman who had mistreated him, the woman who so readily agreed to sell him off like so much chattel.

  I knew Lucy’s and they knew me. I’d have to chance it. Three blocks later we walked into the sit-down part of the walk-up restaurant. People lined up outside and on the inside waiting their turn for dinner. I went right to the door off to the side like in the old days and looked over the tops of the folks’ heads at the girls behind the window taking orders and serving the food. I didn’t see who recognized me, but the door’s solenoid automatic lock buzzed. I pulled. We were in. The door closed automatically behind us. The warm, sweet aroma inside smelled of fresh cooked tortilla, carnitas, and cilantro. My stomach growled. Not so many years ago, years that now felt like decades, I stood in the back by the same stainless steel table and ate all the free food Lucy’s owners put down in front of us, patrol cops who kept the restaurant safe for the inexpensive price of a little food.

  I let Tommy down on the floor. He didn’t flinch at the cold. He was a tough kid. A fat woman I didn’t recognize came over with a tray of tacos, beans, and rice, and chips with salsa. She looked us over, my battered face, dirty bandaged hands, and Tommy’s naked feet. She shook her head and started to leave.

  “Excuse me,” I said,
“Can we please have some guacamole?”

  She nodded and headed for the large walk-in refrigerator. Tommy didn’t wait, he went up on tiptoes, grabbed a taco and took a bite too large for his mouth. The office door opened. Out waddled Ramon Gutierrez, the son of the owner. “Bruno, my man, long time no see.” He held out his hand. I shook it. “Good to see you, too. I didn’t expect this kind of service.”

  He smiled with his eyes, his grin wide enough it looked like it hurt.

  It made me uncomfortable. “I’m not with the cops anymore.”

  He waved a hand in dismissal. “I know that. I saw you come in on the surveillance cameras and popped the door for you.”

  “I pay my own way, Ramon.” I put a hundred down on the stainless steel table, the smallest bill I had.

  He pointed a finger. “Your money’s no good here. And that’s disrespectful. Put it away.”

  When I looked back the hundred was gone. Tommy busied himself eating another taco as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. His mom had turned him into a sneak thief, a thief of opportunity.

  Ramon chuckled, “That kid’s got a real appetite and fast hands.” The fat Mexican lady came out of the walk-in with a plastic tub of fresh guacamole big enough for four people. She set it down in front of Tommy who groaned in satisfaction and immediately dipped his taco.

  Ramon nodded his head toward the office. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  I looked at Tommy, not knowing what to do about him. Ramon read the play. “Rosy,” referring to the fat Mexican lady, “will watch the boy.” He gave her some rapid-fire Spanish. She nodded and took a position right beside Tommy. Ramon led the way into the office cluttered with stacks of invoices on the desk and boxes of overflow paper stock stacked clear to the ceiling. I stood in the open doorway watching the aisle in case Tommy decided to take it on the lam and juke the rotund Rosy.

  “Come in, sit down.”

  “No, thanks, I think I’ll stand.”